The debate on the third reading of the Home-rule Bill
was begun by Mr. Gladstone on Wednesday at noon, in a speech which produced an extraordinary effect in the House of Com- mons, but which certainly does not impress its readers so much as it evidently impressed its hearers. It went over old ground in dealing with the historical examples of Home-rule in Austria-Hungary, Sweden and Norway, and so forth. It went over old ground with which Mr. Chaplin showed himself rather more conversant as regards the literature of Europe on the subject, than the Prime Minister; and it went over ground already travelled over by Mr. Morley in his Newcastle speech, when Mr. Gladstone dwelt on the lavish criticism levelled at the Bill by the Opposition. Mr. Gladstone stated the seven pleas against the Bill with some force, attenuated by obvious exaggeration ; but contented himself with simply asserting that every plea so advanced would be much nearer the truth if a "not" were inserted before each of the operative verbs. And apropos of that remark, he quoted Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's witty statement that in the eighteenth century it seemed as if all the " note " had been taken out of the Com- mandments in order to be distributed over the articles of the Creed. May it not be said that Mr. Gladstone, in his elaborate and reiterated apologies for the Irish boycotters and "Cam- paigners," has been apparently preparing for a like transposi- tion,—saving up the " nets " borrowed from the commandments of the moral law for insertion in the most just and convincing of the pleas against Home-rule?
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